


(just don't be) Reckless (with my heart)

by IndianSummer13



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Betty always knows how to make things better, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Feels, Injury, Kind of unexpected smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 16:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12511160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndianSummer13/pseuds/IndianSummer13
Summary: The second time it happens, when he arrives back at the trailer clutching his ribs and wincing at the metallic taste on his tongue, Betty’s already waiting.This time, he can’t blame it on the bike.Or, Betty has a sixth sense, a bottle of vodka stolen from her parents’ liquor cabinet, and her own particular style of bedside manner.





	(just don't be) Reckless (with my heart)

**Author's Note:**

> There were too many feels in the latest episode not to write this.

“You lied Jug,” she says very softly, eyes shining with tears that she doesn’t allow to fall. The car tyres crunch as Toni pulls away and all that’s left is the two of them.

Jughead half expects her to state the obvious: _you’re hurt_ , and yet she doesn’t. What she does instead is secure an arm around his back - under the leather jacket he’s wearing - and helps him up the few wooden stairs to the trailer.

Wordlessly, he hands her the key and Betty jams it into the lock, shoving the bottom of the door with her foot when it sticks having swollen in the incessant rain. She locks it behind them, flicks on the light and then leads him to the tiny bathroom. He sits like a small child waiting to be told off by its mother, only, the scolding never comes.

She traces the skin around his eyes lightly with her fingertips until he can feel his muscles unclench. Perhaps he hadn’t realised how much it’d hurt until now.

“Betts,” he begins, although he’s not quite sure what he’s trying to say.

In the end, it doesn’t matter because she halts his words with a whispered “hush,” before exhaling what sounds very close to a sigh.

He watches as the sink fills with water and Betty takes out a clean flannel from the little cupboard with its peeling paint and crude supply of toilet roll. He hadn’t even realised there _were_ clean flannels in there. “I brought some over a while ago,” she tells him like he’s voiced this thought out loud. “Just in case.”

Jughead swallows and when he speaks again, his voice is hoarse. “Good call.”

Gently, she squeezes the water out of the material and then sweeps it over his marred skin. He tries to fight the wince that wants to escape but he wonders if the fact that his eyes are closed against the pain gives it away anyway. They open when he feels Betty squeeze his arm reassuringly and he attempts a grateful smile. She only nods, lifting the left corner of her lips up fractionally, then continues with her work.

After every second soak of the flannel, Jughead watches as his girl empties the water and fills the sink up with fresh again so that it’s always clean. His heart aches with how much he loves her.

When she’s cleaned up his face, she pulls her eyes up to meet his - the first time since he’d gotten out of the car. They’re still full with unshed tears and he reaches his hand out to cup her cheek. For the briefest of moments, she secures her fingers around his wrist, holding him in place as she takes an unsteady breath with her eyes closed. When she opens them again, he feels her thumb sink into his pulse point before she drops her hand back to her side.

“Your ribs?” she asks in two cracked syllables, the letters forming each word seeming as though they’re tearing at her throat on the way out.

All Jughead can do is nod.

She peels off his jacket first, allowing it to drop to the floor in a puddle of black, then unties the redundant plaid shirt from around his waist. She allows that to fall to the floor too before staring for a moment at the stained patch of his t-shirt.

When she says, “If I soak it in enough detergent, I might be able to get the stain out,” he’s not sure whether to laugh or cry.

He lifts his arms so she can tug it carefully over his head, the action simultaneously knocking his beanie off of his head and sending a flashback through his mind of the last time she took off his shirt. Their subsequent interruption that time, it had seemed, was the worst thing that could’ve happened.

Funny (or, actually, not funny at all) how wrong he’d been.

There are bruises already forming on his skin, all of which paying particular attention to the fall hue of the leaves around the town. Betty’s fingers land gently on a patch of skin that’s so far unmarked, stroking delicately as she observes his injuries.

He already knows she’s not going to suggest going to the hospital - if she was, she’d have done so already - so he knows he doesn’t have to put up a fight there. Her bottom lip is between her teeth now, indentations becoming evident, and Jughead so desperately doesn’t want her to draw blood that he reaches out to free it with his thumb. The long breath that leaves him spills into the air hot and thick with emotion, but still he doesn’t say anything. Betty does, however, release her own breath, catching his fingers with hers so she can press a soft kiss to his palm.

It reminds him of the night in Pop’s when she bared her own battle wounds.

Turning her attention back to his ribs, she feels along the skin, brow furrowed in concentration and Jughead wants to ask her if she knows what it is that she’s looking for. He wonders if it even matters though, when she bends to kiss the bruises and his heart stutters out of rhythm.

He’ll love her forever, he thinks.

  


There’s a bottle of vodka standing beside the sink. It’s a good brand - not the kind his dad would ever drink - and so he figures it’s made the journey with his girl, all the way from the mahogany cabinet in the dining room of the Coopers’ house. Betty must see him eyeing the light blue label because when she picks it up, there’s another clean flannel in her hand and she says, “The cuts won’t get infected this way.”

It stings like hell when she dabs the gash across his eye and he tightens his grip on the sink hard enough that the porcelain might crack.

“Here,” she whispers, entwining the fingers of her free hand with one of his. “Use me.”

Of course, he won’t. The alcohol continues to sting and his head continues to pound but he can’t be anything other than gentle when it comes to her.

She repeats the same process on each cut, including his bloody knuckles that he hadn’t even noticed until that point, and then finally, she steps back.

“There,” she whispers unsteadily. “All better.”

That’s when she crumbles. The tears that have been threatening to fall since he stepped out of the car finally spill over and down her cheeks in quick succession. Her right hand - the one that’s been so deftly cleaning away his blood - shakes as her fingers wipe at her face futilely and that’s when he notices the dark red-brown now staining the cuff of her white sweater.

She’s stained with _him_.

“Betts,” he chokes, opening his legs as his arms reach out to gather her in closer. “Please don’t.”

She cries into his neck, air leaving her lungs in shaky bursts of hot heat and yet still, she’s so gentle against him. One of her hands settles round his back, holding him to her and the other one clutches at his shoulder. It’s hard to swallow. There’s a growing lump seated in his throat that seems intent on cutting off his air supply, and maybe, he considers, it wouldn’t be too bad of a deal if he got to die in Betty’s arms.

She starts sweeping her lips across his skin: first his neck, then along his collarbone; the underside of his jaw; his temples and up to his forehead. They’re not really a succession of kisses - her lips don’t close - but more a mark of desperation.

Jughead stills her with a hand cupping her face so he can tilt her chin upwards. Wordlessly, he apologises.

She only drops her forehead to his and nods.

  


Betty gathers up his two shirts from the floor, folding the plaid one and setting the one stained with blood in the kitchen sink. He watches as she allows the bowl to fill up with water while she goes back to retrieve his serpents’ jacket and beanie, which she hangs on a peg and sets on the counter respectively.

By the time the sink has filled with water, she’s dumped in more detergent than Jughead has ever used for a collection of items, let alone one, and started scrubbing the cotton material between her hands.

Her features are set into a hard line as she works the blood out of the t-shirt. He opens his mouth to tell her to leave it - he’ll throw the shirt out: it doesn’t matter - but like she can tell what he’s going to say, Betty mumbles, “I can fix it. Just...just let me _fix_ it.”

He steps carefully towards her, placing a hand on each of her elbows to cease her scrubbing. He hasn’t put a shirt back on and her sweater is only thin, allowing him to feel the heat of her body seep into his. Dropping his lips to the exposed strip of skin between the neckline of her sweater and her neck itself, Jughead inhales and takes in the comforting scent of her perfume.

 _I love you_ , he mouths against her skin.

She dips her head and he moves his lips to her ear, voice low when he says, “Leave it baby.”

She lets him cradle her against his chest and despite the ache gripping his torso, he holds her tighter. When he feels her body unstiffen, he waits a minute or so before guiding a hand down her arm so he can turn her into him.

“You need to rest,” she tells him, slowly returning to her stoic Betty Cooper self.

“I’m fine,” he attempts to protest, but she’s heading off towards his bedroom and they both know his words aren’t true anyway.

As his hands reach to unbuckle his belt, Betty seals her own over the top and he freezes. “What’re you -”

“- Shhh,” she cuts in, glancing up and sinking to her knees in front of him and _fuck_ , he thinks, because if this is about to go the way he considers it might, then he doesn’t want it to be like this.

 _Because_ of this.

Try telling that to his body though, because already he can feel something stirring low inside of him. Her fingertips are securing around the waistband of his jeans before he remembers to breathe, by which time she’s guiding him out of them with only her hands and he’s soundlessly complying.

Her hands stroke up the backs of his legs and every single hair on his body feels as though it’s been electrified. By the time she’s pressed a kiss to the inside of his thighs, he can already feel the familiar throb of his dick whenever he’s thought of situations where _this_ might occur. Only this time, his girl is _actually_ about to put her mouth on him… _there_ … and he seems to have lost all ability to communicate. 

When Betty pulls down his boxers, she spends a few seconds simply looking at him, and Jughead swallows hard. “You don’t have to -” 

And then he forgets his own last name because she runs her tongue all the way from the base of his dick to the tip. “- Fuck, Betty.” 

If he wasn’t completely hard before, he is now. She repeats the process again and he closes his eyes, hissing out a breath and he rests a hand on her shoulder. The next time she touches him, it’s to take him into her mouth, her lips sealed around his foreskin as her fingers secure around the base of his dick.

She licks and sucks without any particular rhythm but he couldn’t give less of a shit because she’s before him, on her knees with his blood staining her sweater and the salt from her tears dried on his skin. 

When he’s near the edge, he stops her, tugging her up to her feet as carefully as he can. She opens her mouth and Jughead knows it’s to ask him what she did wrong, and he can’t let those be the words that leave her mouth.

He also doesn’t want to come without kissing her. 

So he guides her hand back down between them, fingers sitting in the creases between hers as they stroke him together until he comes in three quick bursts that land on his stomach - and her sweater. He has to steady himself against her with his other hand and when he feels himself go limp, he drops his forehead to her shoulder and she strokes the back of his neck. 

He wonders if she knows how calm it makes him. How it lulls his heartbeat from banging drum to sleepy tick in mere minutes.

  


He heads to the bathroom to clean up and by the time he returns, Betty’s already rid herself of her sweater and jeans and settled under the covers in one of his t-shirts and her underwear. He grabs a pair of boxers from the drawer and pulls them on with a little difficulty before joining her, inching in until he’s semi-comfortable and she’s angled herself so she can hold him. Her fingers take up their place at the back of his neck and he shuts off the light. 

It’s not late - barely even seven, he figures - but he’s exhausted and all he wants to do is sleep. He can’t though, if he knows he’ll wake to her gone. 

“My mom thinks I’m staying at Veronica’s tonight,” she whispers into the darkness, then presses her lips to his. When they pull back, Jughead lays his head against her chest as Betty continues to comb through the dark strands, separating each wave in a pattern that lulls him into a state of semi-consciousness.

“I’m sorry,” he manages. “I didn’t realise…”

Her hands still briefly, like she’s considering her response. It’s almost inaudible when it comes. “I know.” 

“I love you.”

“I know.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always greatly appreciated.


End file.
